


take my hand, and we'll run away together

by pndraa



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of Death, Romance, backstories, mayhill, speculations of where may's going on vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pndraa/pseuds/pndraa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Maria has an escape route from life's responsibilities planned out for her and Melinda.<br/>The three times Maria's made an offer, and the one time Melinda finally takes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take my hand, and we'll run away together

The first time she offers is during their second year at the academy. Melinda just received the news that her father had passed away – something Maria was never really able to identify with, mainly because she never liked her father. However, that wasn’t her point now.

  Her point was that Melinda May, best friend and academy roommate, had spent the past two days curled up under her blanket, with the curtain on her side of the room drawn, ignoring  anyone that wasn’t Maria. Then again, it was a big improvement from the day that Melinda first got the news. She had gotten a text from her mother, excused herself to make an urgent phone call, and didn’t return for any classes later in the day. Maria found her back in their dorm, seemingly asleep.

  Then she heard the sobbing.

  “Melinda?” Maria asked softly.

  Melinda held back another sob. Not shifting her position, she muttered something about shutting the door, and so Maria did.

  “Are you alright? Do you need anything?” Maria asked, walking towards Melinda’s bed. With the doors closed and the curtains drawn, the room felt much darker than usual.

  Melinda shook her head, not bothering to hold her tears back anymore. Maria sat down on the edge of the bed, where Melinda pulled the blanket higher over her head.

  “Wanna talk about it?” Maria said. Her reply was a muffled noise from Melinda which she simply took as a ‘no’.

  She paused for a moment, glancing down on the mess of blankets on the bed. Only the top of Melinda’s head and a part of her hand was visible. “Alright, but if you need someone, I’ll be here for you.”

  Melinda doesn’t say anything else for the day, and ends up crying herself to sleep. She’s only able to weakly stammer out the news to Maria two days later, when it feels like she’s cried out all her tears, with her head on Maria’s lap, and Maria’s hand slowly running through Melinda’s hair.

 

~

 

A little over a week later, Maria finds herself accompanying Melinda to the funeral of someone she never knew personally. Still, she was sure she cried too – the atmosphere of a room full of weeping and mourning people, with your best friend sobbing on your shoulder, was something difficult _not_ to cry at.

  A few days after the funeral, in Melinda’s childhood bedroom, the two just lay there in the darkness of the night, Melinda still silent and empty.

  Maria finally decided to give it a shot.

  “Hey, I know you won’t be able to focus much on lessons when we go back on Tuesday. So if there’s anywhere you’d like to go before this – we can take a short trip somewhere else before we go back, clear your mind, tell them there was a problem with the fight and this was the earliest we could come back…” Maria began suggesting.

  “Thank you, but I think I’d like to get back to our normal lives. I don’t want to drag this out, as nice as that sounds,” Melinda replied.

  “Alright,” Maria said. Soon, they felt themselves succumbing to the spell of the night, with Melinda slowly drifting to sleep in the warmth and comfort of Maria’s arms, not for the first time.

 

* * *

 

The second time the offer pops up again is when they’re both in SHIELD, and they’ve both returned home from a particularly long and exhausting mission.

  A lot of stress has been put on Melinda on this one. Somehow, the people in their team just automatically assumed Melinda to be their team leader. So for most of the mission, she was tasked with making sure everyone was safe, directing everyone where they should go, and yelling out instructions.

  Hell, she was sure that she could’ve almost died in the crossfire. If not for Maria giving her a violent shove to the side and shooting the unknown attacker twice, there probably would’ve been a bullet in Melinda’s head.

  So the first thing she did when she got home was to lie down, close her eyes, and finally get some rest. Like after most missions, there’d be a short grace period of a day or so where SHIELD was nice enough to let those who had went on the mission take a break. Melinda spent her first at home, drinking tea, reading, and watching pointless shows on the television.

  Then, she spent the entire evening and night of her second day with her coworkers. It was just a small meeting between friends at a bar. Even though she was out, Melinda still felt the pressure on her shoulders. Maria must have sensed something weird, because after Melinda made a lame excuse to leave the table to stand at the balcony of the bar, Maria followed after her.

  “What’s wrong?” Maria asked, pushing the glass door open after Melinda.

  The air outside was fresh, and the wind sent a cold gust of air through Maria.

  “Everything,” Melinda said, eyes gazing out the open area and onto the city ahead of them. She sighed, and turned to Maria as she stood beside her and laid her hands on the metal railings.

  “It’s about the mission,” Maria said. “Isn’t it?”

  Melinda nodded. She hesitated for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder where I would be now if the whole SHIELD thing never happened to me.”

  “It’s not too late for us to find out,” Maria whispered, looking at Melinda. Feeling the gaze on her, Melinda turned to return the look.

  “You mean – we’ll run away from all of this?” Melinda asked, staring into Maria’s eyes.

  “If you want to,” Maria replied.

  Abruptly, Melinda looked away. “No, we shouldn’t. We’re not young anymore. We’ve got our responsibilities and our own things to do. We can’t just leave everything behind.”

  Maria looked down. Inside, she still felt like she should’ve turned away from the whole ‘secret organization’ thing a long time ago.

  “Not even for a month? A week?” She asked.

  Melinda thought about it for a moment. Suddenly, the city felt like it went quiet. Dead. It was just the two of them left standing there, on the dimly-lit balcony of the bar. In a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment decision, she raised a hand to cup Maria’s cheek, and with her heart racing, Maria turned to look at her.

  “No. Just tonight,” Melinda whispered.

  Then, before Maria could reply, Melinda leaned up to kiss Maria. But she pulled away. She didn’t want it to go too far now – the doors and wall back into the bar was glass, and she was sure that the eyes of her friends were trained on the two of them. Maria grabbed Melinda’s hand.

  “My place isn’t too far away,” she said. Melinda gave her a devilish grin. Then, quietly, they made their way out of the bar.

  Unknown to them, their friends did catch them making out on the balcony. And as Coulson received a text from Maria saying that they were ‘leaving early’, Hand made a small joke about the two most uptight people she knew having more game than Coulson himself.

 

* * *

 

The third time Maria brings up the offer is after Bahrain, the night Melinda left Andrew.

  It was raining heavily, and Melinda had no idea who else she could turn to. So, in the dark and rainy night, drenched to the bone and looking like a lost puppy, Melinda found herself knocking on the door of Maria Hill’s apartment, asking if she could crash there for a day or two.

  Maria let her in without needing her to explain anything else.

  For a while, it honestly felt like they were teenagers again. They spent half the night with the TV turned to the only thing worth watching, but didn’t really watch it and just sat there, talking.

  Maria knew that Melinda would be upset – both about Andrew, and everything that happened in Bahrain. She got her to speak more. And she swears she saw Melinda smile for a period of time. Though, she never brought any of it up.

  Melinda was able to find a small place to live a while later, and promised Maria that she’d move there as soon as she could. Maria didn’t want to admit that she had enjoyed Melinda’s company a lot, and was kinda hoping that she’d spend a little more time with her.

  The day Melinda headed out to her new house, Maria made the offer.

  “Remember back before all of this? When we were just in the academy and still just Level Four?” Maria asked. “That offer to take you somewhere we can forget everyone else and just live still stands. Call me if you ever feel like you want to disappear from everyone for a while.”

  Melinda smiled, and said nothing else about it. Instead, she just gave the usual ‘goodbye’ and ‘see you at work’, and tried to deny the fact that she was grinning to herself as she walked away.

 

* * *

 

“Maria, drop the formal tone,” Melinda said, stepping out of the base. “Will you be doing anything important within the next two weeks?”

  “More paperwork, and that’s about it,” Maria replied.

  “You want to escape life for a while?” Melinda asked. “Because a ton of things just happened to me, and I think it’s a good time for me to take a vacation.”

  Melinda was quite sure she could practically _hear_ Maria grinning over the phone. “Alright, where do you want to go? I have a personal jet plane and a flying license at my disposal.”

  Melinda felt a surge of excitement rushing through her blood. “Surprise me.”

  “Hey, you said it. And by the way,” Maria started, laughing softly.

  “Yeah?” Melinda replied.

  “Glad to hear that you finally took my offer.”


End file.
